It is known that currently the cycle for the industrial processing of many kinds of meat, particularly those intended for the production of cooked hams, provides for an operation, known as tenderizing, that consists in providing cuts to interrupt the fibers of the meat in order to avoid shrinkage during cooking, obtaining at the same time the extraction of proteins from the meat thereby facilitating the retention of injected liquids and an increase in the absorption surface.
Currently, the tenderizing operation is performed by means of devices that comprise a plurality of cutting elements, usually knives, which are made to penetrate the meat, and there are two kinds of such devices: a first kind is adapted to work on meats with a rind that must remain undamaged by the cutting operation, and a second kind is instead used in the processing of meat without a rind, which therefore can be crossed fully by the cutting elements.
In addition to this feature, which forces the operators to change device when the type of processed product changes, known devices suffer further drawbacks which include the size of the knives comprised therein.